Tuesday, February 27, 2001

Celebrations for Spam’s 60th birthday have been put on hold as a mark of respect for British farmers hit by the foot-and-mouth outbreak.

IT IS not offensive to call the Queen a bitch if the remark is made by a black man, the television standards watchdog has ruled.

Puppets under fire for TV smoking
BY PAUL MCCANN, MEDIA CORRESPONDENT

THE worlds best-known female undercover agent, Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward, has been attacked by health campaigners for setting a poor example to children.

By smoking through her trademark cigarette holder, the string puppet Lady Penelope, a Supermarionation secret agent for International Rescue in the BBC series Thunderbirds, has fallen foul of the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation.
[The show began in 1965]

Sunday, February 25, 2001

From the Daily Telegraph, which is so much more fun than a real newspaper:

THE first cockney Bible, with Jesus speaking in rhyming slang, will be published in May with the endorsement of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Written by a religious education teacher from the East
End of London, the Bible's account of the feeding of the 5,000 in Chapter VI of the Gospel of John becomes Jesus making a "Jim Skinner" (dinner). It describes him feeding 5,000 "geezers" from five loaves of "Uncle Ned" (bread) and two "Lilian Gish" (fish).

Friday, February 23, 2001

I haven't read the opinion yet, but evidently the Supreme Court exempted states from the Americans with Disabilities Act on grounds of the 11th Amendment, which they clearly haven't read.

On the old cold warriors in the Bush White House, Bruce Cumings of the University of Chicago said of them in `The Nation': "There hasn't been so much pseudogravitas in one room since the last time Henry Kissinger dined alone."

I don't know what it is about cats in this building. This morning a cat was outside my door demanding to be let in. He turns out to belong to the people downstairs, but he spent the whole day either inside my apartment or trying to get in.

I forgot to mention that when Bush justified bombing Iraq, he said that Saddam should live up to his agreement to the no-fly zone. There is no such agreement. The bombing has been solely for the purpose of damaging anti-aircraft facilities which threaten no one other than Americans (and I guess Brits). So I guess our pilots are there to protect themselves. Which they could do just as easily from their couches in the States. Just to make a point that this has nothing to do with anything that happens in Iraq, Saddam's first response to last week's bombing was to assassinate a Kurdish leader.

Hillary Clinton says of her brother's role in brokering pardons, or whatever he was doing, "If he were, you know, Joe Smith from somewhere, who had no connection with me, we wouldn't be standing here, would we?" No, but then Joe Smith wouldn't have been paid $400,000 either, isn't that rather the point? Poor Hillary, it's always just about her, isn't it?

Wednesday, February 21, 2001

Monday was Presidents' Day. George W. rushed downstairs in his footy pajamas and demanded to know where his presents were.

The American intelligence community is enacting once more its game of Good Traitor/Bad Traitor over Robert Philip Hanssen. I think that double s should have been reason enough to suspect him. Anyway, Hanssen could be executed because he was a traitor to his country by telling Russia the names of two of its citizens who were traitors to their country by working for the US. This is why a robot judge would be a bad idea: the infinite regression loop would make its head explode. Anyway, he was caught with the aid of a couple of the good traitors, that is Russian citizens the US pays to give information about our traitors. I'm going to move on to something else before my own head explodes.

Some more good spies, or at any rate lawyers representing them on behalf of the US government before the Supreme Court, argued that people do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy "in the heat that's on the exterior surface of their walls." "Heat loss is an inevitable feature of heat in a structure," said deputy solicitor general Michael Dreeben, who was 98.5 at the time. "That's why there is an insulation industry."

A New Statesman competition asks for world religions summed up in under 100 words. Only one entry worth reproducing:

Protestantism: You are one on one with God.
Catholicism: You are one on one with the priest.
Buddhism: You are One with The Oneness of All.
Hinduism: You are one with a lot of gods.
Jainism: You are 1 on a scale of 1 to 5.
Judaism: You are the one in the yarmulke.
Scientology: You are the one born every minute.
Islam: You are the one with the AK47.
New Age: You are wonderful.
Satanism: Oooh, you are a one.

Tuesday, February 20, 2001

I've figured out what's going on with that cat from downstairs. When I was out Thursday, I left food and water outside the door for my cat. When I came home more of it was gone than I though my cat would have eaten, but some of it was still there, so I knew it wasn't racoons. The point is, this cat I hadn't even met yet ate my food, and then the next morning meoued outside my door to
be let in. And today.

Beginning of a Daily Telegraph story:

THE Swiss ringmaster and elephant trainer who has emerged as the latest lover of Princess Stephanie of Monaco yesterday declared that while he was prepared to leave his wife, he would never abandon the circus.

Monday, February 19, 2001

I suppose every country gets the tax system it deserves. The new figures say that audits halved again in 2000 and 44% of them consist of audits of poor people. This protects the rich people's taxes from fraud by the poor people, but why do the rich people even bother to pay taxes? IRS auditors are not scared that they'll lose their jobs if they go after anyone who can fight back.

The latest Clinton scandal is that his half-brother Roger, just arrested for drunk driving, has been investigated for selling pardons (although I presume his own was free). Of course his pardon covers this. Jeez, evidently the man lives in Torrance. Isn't that punishment enough?

Saturday, February 17, 2001

The Dutch royal family deny that Prince Johan Friso is gay.
He is 2nd in line to the throne, but the 1st in line is dating the daughter of a member of the Argentine junta of the 1970s and would probably have to step aside if he married her.

11 countries just took a major step towards implementing
the death penalty. Can you name them?

SF mayor Willie Brown gets a restraining order against an Elvis impersonator.

In more SF news, the city health plan will now cover sex changes. I guess it's when they're mandatory that you've got a problem.

A piece on McNeil-Lehrer a couple of days ago on military spending featured people complaining that the military was still preparing to fight the Cold War against a non-existent enemy. Of course the Navy still hasn't found out that Japan surrendered in 1945.

NY Times headline: “Civilian Says Submarine Took Precautions.”
That, of course, is why they couldn't spot that big ol' trawler: their periscope had a condom over it.

You groan now, but you'll be forwarding it to all your
friends.

Bush finishes off "national security week," which some people would say hadn't gone very well, given that the same military that doesn't notice a fishing boat is supposed to hit a missile with another missile in space, by bombing Baghdad. Donald Rumsfeld on McNeil-Lehrer said that the ABM treaty was ancient history, so what's bombing Baghdad--golden oldies?

So now Bush has killed his first foreign civilians. How long before he catches up with the number of Americans he's caused
to be put to death?

The British papers suggest that the British may also have participated in the bombing of Baghdad, although you'd never know it from the American papers. London Times headline: Bombs Renew the Special Relationship. As long as it was in a good cause.

In a heart-warming story, an 11-year old boy sneaks on to a train to London, travels 150 miles, then tries to see the Queen to ask her to stop the bullying in his school. He is then beaten to death by Beefeaters. OK, maybe not that last part.

Saturday, February 10, 2001

Serialized in the the Sunday Times is an excerpt from a book which says that the Holocaust was run off of IBM punch cards.

A solicitor has launched a legal effort to allow solicitors to wear horse-hair wigs and long robes in mourning for Charles II just like the barristers.

Liechtenstein Prince Hans-Adam II is proposing referenda to increase his powers greatly at the expense of parliamentary government. The world's a pretty funny place when the crown prince of Liechtenstein starts getting delusions of grandeur. If they don't all pass, he threatens to move to Vienna and sell his castle to Bill Gates.

Thursday, February 08, 2001

So thanks to the arbitrary census rules, Utah just barely
lost a Congressional seat to North Carolina. It seems that overseas federal workers including military are counted, but Mormon missionaries are not. Sound familiar at all? Utah is suing to overturn the count made under rules already in place for a decade. Now?

Bulgaria bars the former king from running for president.

What is it with tape recordings lately? Ukraine
president Kuchma is heard on tape ordering the death of a journalist; Pakistani authorities giving orders to the judge in the trial of the former prime minister; and those Peruvian bribery tapes involving every politician, leaking out one by one by one by one.

So thanks to the arbitrary census rules, Utah just barely
lost a Congressional seat to North Carolina. It seems that overseas federal workers including military are counted, but Mormon missionaries are not. Sound familiar at all? Utah is suing to overturn the count made under rules already in place for a decade. Now?

Bulgaria bars the former king from running for president.

What is it with tape recordings lately? Ukraine
president Kuchma is heard on tape ordering the death of a journalist; Pakistani authorities giving orders to the judge in the trial of the former prime minister; and those Peruvian bribery tapes involving every politician, leaking out one by one by one by one.

Tuesday, February 06, 2001

As expected, Israel elected the war criminal as prime minister. Oh good. And Barak announces that he is leaving politics. From his performance in this election, I think we all thought he left politics weeks ago. You know your "democracy" is in trouble when the only choice is between two former generals.

Putin will re-merge the bits of the old KGB that Yeltsin
split into separate organizations. Oh good. And he fired that regional governor who faked the heart attack. Evidently he couldn't keep the electricity on in Vladivostok. Hear that Gray Davis! I assume that was your fault that KQED was off the air during the first half hour of Masterpiece Theatre--now this is personal!

Sunday, February 04, 2001

The authorities in Turkey are looking askance at a boxing match held last week between two four-year old girls.

The Moscow Times says that Bush's mouth is where words
go to die.

A hunt saboteur in Britain rescues a fox. Which bites him. The hunters are pretty impressed that he was able to pick up the fox. They still think he's an idiot.

I noticed in the New York Times website that one can click on an icon to "personalize your weather." Now does that mean that it will make up a nickname for it--there's a cold front coming in from the north, which you can call Joe--or does it mean you get your own personal weather, like that character in Lil Abner with the rain cloud over his head? Or is it a revenge thing: the rain is back, and this time---it's personal!

Friday, February 02, 2001

2 more Korean War soldiers, South Koreans, escape from
slavery in North Korea. There are some people in the South who think that before further concessions are made to the North, it might at least be persuaded to let go POWs it has held for 50 years.

New Zealand soldiers were used as extras in the filming
of Lord of the Rings, playing hobbits before going on to peacekeeping duties in East Timor. There's a good joke in there somewhere, no doubt.

Thursday, February 01, 2001

AN eight-year-old boy was suspended for three days from a Kentucky school for pointing a chicken drumstick at a teacher and saying "pow, pow, pow".

Teachers at the school said they had "zero tolerance" of guns after two boys in a nearby town shot dead four pupils and a teacher in March 1998. The suspended boy's mother said the punishment was severe. Simon Davis, Los Angeles